When I unretired from my full-time job as an editor in 2022, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. I hadn’t counted on ageism. Turns out, ageism is all around us — in the media, at the doctor’s office, in the anti-aging products in drugstore aisles and in our daily conversations.
As William Kole notes in his new book, “The Big 100: The New World of Super-Aging,” University of Michigan researchers found that among people they surveyed, eight in 10 respondents ages 50 to 60 said they’d encountered one or more forms of everyday ageism. I heard a lot about the scourge of ageism at a recent symposium at which I was a speaker. The event — Dismantling Ageism: How Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination Based on Age Affect Us All — was held a day after Ageism Awareness Day, which falls on Oct. 7.Ageism is invisible and taught “Ageism is really invisible,” the symposium’s keynote speaker, Tracey Gendron, said. Gendron is the chair of the department of gerontology at Virginia Commonwealth University. ”Ageism is not innate. It is taught.” It also makes people feel invisible — along with depressed, disrespected, devalued, marginalized and overlooked, said Kris Geerken, co-director of the …
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